Past research has shown that the level of operating accruals is a negative cross-sectional predictor of stock returns. This paper examines whether the accrual anomaly extends to the aggregate stock market. In contrast with cross-sectional findings, there is no indication that aggregate operating...

We document considerable return comovement associated with accruals after controlling for other common factors. An accrual-based factor-mimicking portfolio has a Sharpe ratio of 0.16, higher than that of the market factor or the SMB and HML factors of Fama and French (1993). In time series...

This paper uses the tools of computational linguistics to analyze the qualitative part of the annual reports of UK listed companies. More specifically, the frequency of words associated with praise, concreteness and activity is measured and used to forecast future stock returns. We find that our...

The monetary unit assumption of financial accounting assumes a stable currency (i.e., constant purchasing power over time). Yet, even during periods of low inflation or deflation, nominal financial statements violate this assumption. I posit that, while the effects of inflation are not...

This research seeks to discover if there is any relationship between the delay in the publication of the annual financial statements of companies, and their level of corporate governance, assuming that the delay on its liberation would indicate a smaller transparency of the company. For that,...

This paper analyzes the relationship between public disclosure, private information and stock liquidity in the Tunisian market. We use a sample of 41 listed firms in the Tunis Stock Exchange in 2007. First, we find no evidence that there is a relation between public and private information....

We test whether and how equity overvaluation affects corporate financing decisions using an ex ante misvaluation measure that filters firm scale and growth prospects from market price. We find that equity issuance and total financing increase with equity overvaluation; but only among overvalued...

The Economic Value Added formally translates the theoretical notion of excess profit (also known as residual income). Its use is so firmly entrenched in applied corporate finance and management accounting that its name is often used as a noun for denoting the concept of excess profit itself....

This paper presents a new way of measuring residual income, originally introduced by Magni (2000a, 2000b, 2003). Contrary to the standard residual income, the capital charge is equal to the capital lost by investors. The lost capital may be viewed as (a) the foregone capital, (b) the capital...

This paper tells the story of a student of economics and finance who meets a couple of alleged psychopaths, suffering from the ‘syndrome of Zelig’, so that they think of themselves to be experts of economic and financial issues. While speaking, they come across the concept of excess profit....